Yippee! More Bank Runs in the Future!

Robert Lenzner of Forbes advises that you and I will be blindsided by the next financial crisis. Lenzner bases his reasoning on Yale economist Gary Gorton’s recent book Misunderstanding Financial Crises, Why We Don’t See Them Coming. According to Gorton the old-fashioned bank run is back, only in a different form. The recent financial crisis was different from earlier ones in that it was not initiated by bank depositors scrambling to withdraw their funds. Rather it was precipitated by a “run” among short-term lenders who had purchased banks’ commercial paper or lent money to banks through “repos” (repurchase agreements). When these lenders suddenly tried to liquidate these assets by selling them or not renewing the loans, their actions deprived banks of the short-term funds that the banks had been using to finance their long-term lending and investments.

As Lenzner describes the evolution of the crisis:

What transpired in 2007-08 “resembled the bank runs of the pre-Federal Reserve era. These were primitive expressions of panic by people trying desperately to sell assets, driving the price of those assets down, and causing other people to panic as well and try to get out at the same time.